Skaters, onlookers share thoughts on narratives on ice

After the Winter Lights Festival ice dancing performances on Jan. 26, local skaters, mostly kids, took over the ice and also slid down Tom Holmes' ice sculptures.

JESSICA COHEN

After the Winter Lights Festival ice dancing performances on Jan. 26, local skaters, mostly kids, took over the ice and also slid down Tom Holmes' ice sculptures.

Meanwhile, a group of adults and handful of children also went to Good Shepherd Church for a question-and-answer session with performers, plus free cookies and hot chocolate. Festival producer Mike Carson hoped to get useful feedback from festival attendees to guide funding applications for future Winter Lights festivals, and videographer Bill Gerstenmaier was there to record it. What Carson wanted to know was whether people understood the stories choreographed in the performances.

Beth Woronoff, founder of Boundless Ice Dancing School and Theater, explained the piece "Dorris Goes to Birdland," in which a narrative at the beginning told of how jazz musician Miles Davis was dragged away from a famous jazz club by police for talking to a white woman. Dorris witnesses this and her ice dance responds.

"Did you understand the words at the beginning?" asked Woronoff.

People enjoyed, but might not have understood.

"It was hard to hear the words," said a man.

"I got that she had a good time. I liked the jazz. It was different from the other pieces," said a woman.

"We like to have nonballetic techniques," said Woronoff.

"It was skillful the way they made mistakes on cue," said the woman. "We've created a new genre with ice dancing — tell stories and allow skaters to be skater-actors," Carson said.

"Skating can become mechanical," said performer Patrick Conley, who had skated in a somber piece about medieval war as well as the more bubbly "Berlin, 1928," with dance music from "Threepenny Opera."

For ice dancing dramas, he said, "I can show up and not worry about skill development and competition for points and whether the coach will yell at me. Competition pressure can suck the joy out of skating."

Conley noted that before the show he had performance "jitters." "But the audience seemed like nice people," he said. "Why get worked up? I'm just going out to communicate something. Today I was more able to see people out there." Alizah Allen, who played Dorris, had also skated in "Viva La Vida," the piece about Frida Kahlo that was intended for the festival last year, but only made it to video because of warm weather. "There's a lack of men in figure skating," she said. "So I played Trotsky. It stretched me more than just acting like a man. I had to skate like a man."

Among those drinking cocoa, eating cookies, and chatting were Noorallah Downing and Bill Hall, who had come from Stroudsburg, following the suggestion of their friend Kate Kise, a nurse at Pocono Medical Center, who was also there. "It's a good way to celebrate winter," said Downing. "It was beautifully done, very expressive. The prima donna was funny. And I loved the ice sculpture for the children."

Dowling is retired from teaching at a Montessori school.

Another retired teacher there was Carl Carrozza, the 59-year-old ice dancer, who had choreographed and performed a tribute to his father's war pilot days. He had begun skating at 50 after a career as a middle school science teacher. In his second year of skating with Woronoff, he began teaching for her school.